reflection Archives - Adventures in Oceanography and Teaching

Ice watching and thinking about reflections — in the water, and in Harvey et al. (2025)’s article

February 17, 2025

Climbing the steps out of the water after an ice dip lets me see the world from a different perspective. Instead of focussing on not slipping and on controlling my…

Reading up on the purpose, pros and cons of positionality statements

December 17, 2024

Reading up on more positionality statement discussions for ongoing work with Kirsty, which started from us drawing up our own positionality statements and discussing the differences [see hers and mine…

Kolb (1984), Olsson & Roxå (2013), and McAlpine & Weston (2000): Learning cycles and how closely do you stick to your planned teaching?

January 19, 2024

Experiential learning cycles are everywhere in my work in academic development, so here is a brief overview over how they are used to describe and support teachers developing their teaching.

Fun #WaveWatching today! Reflections all the way….and then the boundary suddenly ends!

May 7, 2021

You might remember this edge here and the reflection situation. More details in this recent post, but in a nutshell: The wave crests marked in red are approaching the beach…

When you meet a hard boundary, the reflection starts

April 25, 2021

When I look at the picture above, I see basically three different zones on the surface of the lake. The yellow zone, which is under the direct influence of the…

Bergen harbour wave watching

September 20, 2019

Oh look, someone built a perfect rectangular wave watching basin into Bergen harbour! As you see above, waves are propagating towards this little wave tank and into it. They then…

A #friendlywaves from Tampa, Florida

July 13, 2019

Anyone who might be new to my blog because of yesterday’s presentation at #SiPManc — please don’t be scared and run away, this is the most complicated #friendlywaves I have…

Sunday #wavewatching. Shallow water waves, deep water waves, #wakewatching, reflections, refractions, and more.

May 26, 2019

This is the blogpost I wanted to write today before I got distracted by all the adventures on MS Stadt Kiel with sightseeing and swing dancing and all the good stuff…

Determining the slope of sea surface via the reflection of a structure

May 9, 2019

(Disclaimer: The physics the title refers to are somewhere in the second half of the blog post when I am done rambling) In case you are wondering why I am…

Reflections in waves

May 5, 2019

After doing a #friendlywaves post from a Norwegian fjord yesterday, let’s do another one from somewhere south of Bergen, by my friend Arnt. Very different mood today! What I find…

Early morning wave watching. Nothing quite like it :-)

April 17, 2019

Occasionally working from home is awesome for many reasons, but mainly because I can use the time usually spent on commuting on … wait for it … wave watching. With…

Wave watching by proxy — looking at how waves focus light on the sea floor

March 1, 2019

What is it that we actually look at when we go wave watching? Water is pretty much clear (or at least it is in the spots where I like to…

Is #wakewatching the new and improved #wavewatching?

February 23, 2019

It all began when I spotted a wake (the feathery, dark line going across the water behind that boat house) and decided I needed to show the world how cool…

Reflecting waves, reflected and refracted light, and a Fata Morgana

February 23, 2019

How much physics can you spot in a single picture? What I see here: Waves and their reflection on the sea wall (Do you see the two main fields? One…

Commissioned wave watching: Eckernförde edition on a beautiful calm and sunny Sunday!

January 20, 2019

Recently, more and more of my friends send me pictures of waves they spotted when walking along a lake side or taking a ferry ride. I love how contagious wave watching…

Forget about big waves, today we are focussing on the details!

January 15, 2019

Today we are focussing on tiny waves right near the shore inside the sheltered harbor. See how below there are two wave fields, one with longer waves with crests that…

Wave reflections

September 20, 2018

This still is one of my favourite kinds of wave field to look at. So calming. (Who am I kidding. All waves are my favourite waves, of course! I am…

Total reflection and fishies

September 6, 2017

Do you know the phenomenon that once you start noticing something, you see it everywhere? That’s been the case with me and total internal reflection. Not quite as impressive as…

Total internal reflection

September 5, 2017

Have you ever wondered why at some angles the sea looks blue (or whatever the color of the sky that day) and at others you can actually look into the water?…

Reflecting the sky

August 15, 2017

Even though I mostly look at the water to see waves, sometimes it is also really nice to just watch the reflections of the sky…

Awesome reflection of a wave train

August 9, 2017

This is a really good way to train your eyes to spot reflections of waves: watch a single wave train hit a sea wall: Please don’t get sea sick when…

Wakes and what they do to the sun’s reflection

July 11, 2017

When I said that wake watching made me happy last week, did you really think those were all the wakes I was going to show you? Ha! No, I have…

Reflected wake

July 6, 2017

The best ship-watching of the year happens during Kiel Week (even if I do a fair bit of ship-watching year round ;-)) But this year, I was absolutely fascinated with…

Wave watching

July 4, 2017

This is an old picture from early spring, but I just love how the reflection of that pier shows up the different wave lengths so clearly. The longer swell wouldn’t…

Waves reflecting on a sea wall

May 11, 2017

I really like it when waves reach a sea wall at an angle, because the resulting criss-cross looks so cool :-) And especially cool when you see it gradually building…

Playing with a thermal imaging camera

March 28, 2017

I recently borrowed a thermal imaging camera from work. So much fun! Below you see a cold sky, warmer trees and two really warm people walking through the park. One…

Wave-watching

December 15, 2016

Do you know the feeling when you, even on the most beautiful of days, want to get out of the pretty parks as quickly as possible so you can finally…

Reflections on reflections

November 15, 2016

When we think about reflections in water, we usually think of calm lakes and trees on the shore opposite to us. Or clouds. Or at least that’s what I think…

Another wave hunt expedition: Learning to discover ocean physics wherever you go

June 21, 2016

One of my favourite topics right now: Learning to “see” ocean physics wherever you go. For example here: A visit to my goddaughter in Schleswig, and this time we are practicing all…

Diffraction and reflection of waves

May 5, 2016

Last night, we saw really nice wave phenomena on the Schlei in Schleswig. Do you see the waves being diffracted by the pier in the picture below? Waves are coming in…

Waves on Aasee in Münster. By Mirjam S. Glessmer

More wave phenomena on a lake, and a bit about wind

March 22, 2016

Last week I showed you the results of my “wave hunt expedition” on Aasee in Münster. Today, I am following up with the same lake on the day after and…

Wave hunt expedition. You don’t need to live close to the coast to observe all kinds of wave phenomena!

March 17, 2016

A 1.5 hour walk around a lake — and 242 photos of said lake — later I can tell you one thing: You definitely don’t need to live close to…

The difference between secondary rainbows and double rainbows

October 14, 2015

More reflection or more rain? Ha, aren’t you enjoying talking about optics again? Sometimes you see two rainbows that both have red on the outside and blue on the inside.…

Sun dogs

October 12, 2015

Recently spotted: sun dogs, a special form of halo! Or rather sun dog (singular), since there was only one to be seen and not a second one at equal distance…

Waves radiating from an object

April 29, 2015

In the last post, I showed you flow separation on a pylon in Elbe river. Remember? Today, we are back at the same pylon, only that this time the tidal…

What are the ingredients of a rainbow?

September 15, 2014

Still collecting materials for our instructional short movies. A while back I talked about how my colleague and I were experimenting with short instructional screen casts, and I shared some…

Why do we only see rainbows in the mornings and evenings, but never at noon?

August 6, 2014

Another movie on rainbows My dearest readers, I hope you are still as fascinated by rainbows as I am? Today I’m giving you another movie explaining something rainbow-related, namely why…

Rainbows III

August 4, 2014

Updated movie following Arne’s advice. When I asked for feedback on the rainbow movies the other day, Arne had a pretty good idea for how one of the explanations could…

Secondary rainbows

July 28, 2014

Sometimes you get lucky and see a double rainbow. But how does the second rainbow form? On my first 17th of May in Bergen, Ellen invited me to her home…

Rainbows and refraction II

July 25, 2014

Taking the same graphics as in this post, but presenting them differently. In the previous post, I presented a screen cast explaining, in a very text-booky way, how rainbows form.…

Rainbows and refraction

July 23, 2014

Why is a rainbow always red on top and blue at the bottom? We always talk about prisms and refraction and stuff, but be honest – would you be able to…

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